Unsurprisingly, the man who scored The Godfather knew how to get hearts racing in the opera house. Nino Rota’s best-known work in the medium, Il cappello di paglia di Firenze (‘The Florentine Straw Hat’, 1955) crops up in the catalogue now and then but here we have two one-acters that came either side of it: I due timidi (‘The Two Timid Ones’) was written for radio broadcast by RAI in 1950 and La notte di un nevrastenico (‘The Night of a Neurotic’) premiered at La Scala’s second stage a decade later. It’s not just clunky titles they have in common. Both use hotels as their setting and poke fun at supposed foibles in adult disposition. If the latter doesn’t deter promoters, the former means they’re easily staged together with a single set, as here at the 2017 Reate Festival.

Still, anyone arguing the case for their revival will have to work hard selling the plots. I due timidi, with a libretto by Suso Cecchi D’Amico, hinges on two consecutive cases of instantaneous mistaken identity that mean would-be lovers marry the wrong partners and are separated for ever (think an inverted Così fan tutte). That’s fine in a farcical comedy, but the music Rota writes is serious. Eventually, soaked in Mediterranean romanticism as the parted lovers sing of what might have been, it breaks your heart but the slapstick premise can’t support the verismo tragedy.

If you can get past that, it is a gorgeous piece. Rota can’t quite muster Puccini’s final layer of harmonic interest and novel orchestration but he rivals his senior for melodic generosity and is brilliant with vocal characterisation and linguistic clarity. His lyrical ensemble pieces are wondrous. He is not afraid of introducing external styles in the service of theatre – jazz in I due and mambo in La notte – and is alive to dramatic direction and emotional interplay, albeit in a more micro than macro sense.

In La notte, not quite as convincing as its longer predecessor, we are again faced with the question of how far Rota and his librettist, Riccardo Bacchelli, meant their story to be read ironically. This opera tells of a neurotic insomniac trying to get a good night’s sleep. We might recoil at the mockery of an individual with anxiety issues; but there could be an argument that Rota’s score pleads sympathetically for the title character while the ‘normal’ folk – two guests having loud sex in one adjacent room, a policeman dropping his heavy footwear in another – are the real subjects of mockery (not that this production attempts it). It is a leaner, spikier work than its companion.

The performances are simply staged with a touch of commedia dell’arte and allowed to blossom in all the right ways by the conductor Gabriele Bonolis. There’s some ragged orchestral work but lovely singing that indulges Rota’s irresistible legatos. Daniele Adriani stands out as the male lover Raimondo in I due and as the Commendatore in La notte. His is not a classic Italian tenor sound, rather something with more grain but still adequate smoothness and notable presence.

Sabrina Cortese shines far more as his lover than as the female sex addict in La notte, while the big number from Mrs Guidotti, who Raimondo accidentally marries, captures the moment in Chiara Osella’s stopped-diapason mezzo, projected with fortitude.

Giorgio Celenza doesn’t quite know what to do with himself as the Narrator in I due but proves a malleable spirit for director Cesare Scarton as the insomniac in La notte. I wonder if his final act of violence played out here is there in the text. Otherwise, it strikes me that Scarton, too, is a little confused as to whether we’re dealing with farce or tragic observation. The safest option is to stick to the CD versions and revel in two engaging theatrical scores. They are nice little discoveries and might well prove the same for those opera companies who have adopted more flexible repertoire configurations or conservatories preparing their students for the professional stage.